Show Business: Rhoda and Lou and Mary and Alex

Listen carefully and you can hear his laugh on reruns of The Mary Tyler
Moore Show. Sometimes you can hear him even without listening
carefully: just wait for something that sounds like a Canadian goose
with a terminal hangover. "It's in every show," says Producer
Ed Weinberger. "It's like a signature. It's unique because he's
not laughing with everybody else. He hears things that other people
don't."

Both the honk and those extrasensory ears belong to James Brooks, and if
he breaks up at his own jokes, he has a good excuse: Brooks is...